22nd Amendment
Twenty-Second Amendment
Ratified February 27, 1951
Verbatim
Exact text as ratified.
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
Plain English
A translation that drops archaic words but keeps the meaning, including the parts courts still argue about.
Section 1. No person can be elected President more than twice. If a person has held the office of President, or served as Acting President, for more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected, that person can only be elected President once. This rule did not apply to the President in office when the amendment was proposed.
Section 2. This amendment will not take effect unless ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures within seven years.
About
The Twenty-Second Amendment was ratified on February 27, 1951. It established a two-term limit on the presidency. The amendment was a response to Franklin D. Roosevelt's four consecutive election victories (1932, 1936, 1940, 1944). Before Roosevelt, every President since George Washington had voluntarily followed a two-term tradition, but the tradition was not legally binding. Roosevelt's unprecedented four terms led Congress to make the limit constitutional.
The "more than two years" rule in Section 1 addresses a specific scenario: if a Vice President becomes President due to the death or resignation of the elected President, the time served as President counts against the two-term limit only if it exceeds two years. A Vice President who serves less than two years of someone else's term can still be elected to two full terms of their own. A Vice President who serves more than two years can be elected only once.
The amendment specifically exempted Harry Truman, who was President when it was proposed and would have been affected. Truman did run again in 1952 but withdrew during the primary season for unrelated reasons.